Tag: Obama administration

DHS documents were released to Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) that despite extensive redactions reveal a greater administration role than previously known in the crackdown on the Occupy movement.

The release is described on the PCJF website:

Homeland Security Documents Show Massive Nationwide Monitoring of Occupy Movement

Documents just obtained by the PCJF from its FOIA request show massive nationwide monitoring, surveillance and information sharing between the Department of Homeland Security and local authorities in response to Occupy. The PCJF, also on behalf of author/filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee, has made a series of FOIA demands regarding law enforcement involvement in the Occupy Crackdown. …

This set of released materials reveals intense involvement by the DHS’ National Operations Center (NOC) in these activities. The DHS describes the NOC as, “the primary national-level hub for domestic situational awareness, common operational picture, information fusion, information sharing, communications, and coordination pertaining to the prevention of terrorist attacks and domestic incident management. The NOC is the primary conduit for the White House Situation Room and DHS Leadership for domestic situational awareness and facilitates information sharing and operational coordination with other federal, state, local, tribal, non-governmental operation centers and the private sector.”

Documents are available in 3 pdfs here, here and here.

Sometimes, your kids tell you great things.

We have the coolest house on the street.

Wow.  

We’re cool — according to the kids.  

Certainly isn’t the non-existent slide for the pool that isn’t there.  

Our lack of a huge media room and the glaring absence of a gym didn’t contribute.  

And, while I’ve always thought it cool that we live on the white house of the street, that isn’t it either.  

My fourth-grader son explained to me why it’s cool:

Because we know where our electricity comes from.

Last fall, facing a bit of pressure (mainly from 350.org) about the absence of solar from the White House roof since the Reagan Administration took off the panels President Carter put it, the Administration promised that the White House would have solar panels up on the roof “before the end of spring”.

As of today, 15 June 2011, the White House still doesn’t have solar panels on it.

The clock is ticking as even with climate disruption messing up our seasons, spring still ends 20 June …  

This is what should have happened directly after and as to 9/11! Terrorism is a criminal offense, international criminal terrorism is an international crime. We had the backing of most of the World then, meaning working with them and their resources added to ours. There should never have been Iraq and all that went with that as well as the added recruiting tools in Afghanistan. Once the Taliban were driven from there we should have worked to reign in the ghost al Qaeda while helping to rebuild Afghanistan after decades of war destruction, as we promised. But we walked away once again, like we did after the Afghan/Soviet debacle, rest is the present history as we created the next generations of bin Ladens, already out there!!

Construction and use of buildings account for a major share of global warming emissions. Depending on how one calculates, allocating roughly 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to this built infrastructure is roughly correct.  Heating … cooling … lighting … building materials … etc, it all adds up (and up … and up).  A good share of the building GHGs relates back to energy usage — where, after all, does the lion’s share of coal-generated electricity end up other than illuminating our entertainment systems and over-cooling during summer heat?

A simply reality: tremendous room exists for efficiency measures at not just cost effective but, in fact, profitable financial rates of return.  That energy efficiency has remained an under-exploited  example of a win-win-win space means that it remains a place for fast and effective action.

Today, President Obama focused on this win-win-win opportunity.  

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday on two cases that have the potential to further ease the way for theocracy in the United States.

At stake is whether or not citizens can sue when tax credits are used to fund religious education and whether or not taxpayers have the right to sue to stop it. “The Obama administration says taxpayers have no right to sue if a state uses tax funds for parochial school tuitions,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

The ‘ability to sue over church-state claims at stake‘, The Associated Baptist Press reports. A 5-4 conservative Roberts Court decision “has the potential to change the way the law handles cases dealing with government endorsement of religion.”

If the court sides with the state, one consequence could be a significant reduction in taxpayers’ ability to sue governments over violations of the First Amendment clause that says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Obama’s War On The Left Has No Exit Strategy:

1. We’ve heard President Obama himself snidely mock a group of single payer Health Care advocates, at a Town Hall meeting, as:   “the little people“.

2. We’ve heard the President’s own White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, bash all progressives (the very people who voted for him) and call them “FU*KING RETARDS”.
3. And now we’ve heard the President’s own White House Spokesman, Robert Gibbs, derail that the Political Left as all just a bunch of “drug addicts“, and also crazy apparently as well (the equvialent of: “FU*king Retards” – hence a common theme emerges).
4. We’ve also heard Gibbs insist that the agenda of “the Left” is solely to abolish the Pentagon in it’s entirety altogether, and claim that Dennis Kucinich campaigned on this point (even though Kucinich did no such thing).  And more Rush-Limbaugh-esque smears and attacks by Gibbs on “The Left” were that they would never be statisfied with Obama under any scenario, unless a full Canadian style Health Care system had been passed into Law (which is also more lying nonsense).

In answering the question: Did he still stand by his comments?“, Robert Gibbs said an unequivocal YES    (and this is about the only thing in the entire world that Barack Obama, and his administration, have ever been unequivocal about in their lives).

What we have been witnessing here is the real, behind-the-scenes, governing sentiment being expressed here by President Obama and his entire All-Neocon, All-WallStreet, Pro-WarCrimes, pro-BankOligarchMonopoly, faux-Reform administration…just finally spilling over the edges and into public view. Obama’s pure contempt and haterd of The Left is now undeniable and absolute, and can never be taken back. It was not simply the case, that he was outflanked by a minority of GOP politicians, or intimidated by Fox News. The truth is that Obama hates “The Left” and is committed to the wrong side (the Dark side) on all the important issues where real government reforms and government action is absolutely required (to reverse the damage to our Country over the last 8 years).

The man who cynically campaigned for Election purposes (not unlike Richard Nixon) on ending the Wars, and also “ending the mindset that got us into the Wars“, and on insincerely made platitudes of “change from the bottom-up” and “hope” while whoring for Campaign donatations from “the little people”, has now revealed himself to be a total Political Fraud, and a wholesale bait and switch deceiver of the public — both in his policy terms and choice of advisors (which are obvious), and now also even in his public messaging as well.

It’s important not to view these statements as mere abberations, or some sequence of unrelated events. What they are is just the inner monologue of Obama, and his political cronies, bursting out for the World to see. No mere teleprompter speech or scripted Press Conference could ever now erase that.  Only actual job firings, and real policy changes could ever display any indication that an End to Obama’s War on the Left could even be a remote, credible possibility. But we already know that we won’t be seeing any of that.